All Flesh is Ash
by Vulkodlak
Summary: Xavin is five years old when he first sees someone die.


Xavin is five years old when he first sees someone die.

He's seen death before. In private tutoring sessions, in personal explorations of the palace's massive video libraries, in unscheduled trips down to the kitchens, even. He believes he knows it well enough.

He is wrong.

There are five of them. Majesdanes. He knows of them as well as he knows of death.

When his father first opens the doors to their little prison chamber, the first thing that hits him is the smell of them. He feels it like a fist to his jaw, like a rending behind his eyes, a wild scattershot of _heat, ozone, rot,_ and other things. Things so intensely alien that he struggles to categorize them.

Alien. He has never before understood the term. Surely there cannot be such vastly different things in a single universe. Surely there cannot be a creature that looks so like a Skrull, but yet is so intensely unlike one.

And yet.

They're _offensive_ , on some primal level Xavin hasn't yet begun to understand. He feels it in the hollow of his chest, in the quick of his bones, a throbbing ache in his brain. It's etched into the sharp lines of their faces, in the knife patterns of their motions, in the high arching burr of their voices, _wrong, wrong, all wrong._

They hurt. It's like every fiber of their being is dedicated to being offensive to his senses. The swirling light of their skin feels like it pierces through his eyes and coalesces into a heavy film over his brain. Their odor is so powerful it sends him retching every time it hits the vomeronasal bulbs in the back of his throat.

He glances sidelong at his father through watery eyes and catches the brunt of his disappointment. Xavin nearly flinches, but thinks better of it. He carefully tucks his scent glands behind the walls of his throat and lashes tendrils of newly grown muscle around his spine, daring it to bend towards the enemy again.

He is the child of a Prince, and he is a child of war and he cannot back down.

His father grunts in what Xavin imagines is approval, and motions at a panel mounted on the wall. A voice chirps it's acquiescence, and one of the figures is released from its bonds, crumpling limply to the floor. An adult, long and lean and gaunt, thin limbs splayed in an inelegant sprawl. Its pale red hair is matted and brittle, and the light of its skin swirls in sluggish, oily ripples across its body; red, pink, yellow, and the faintest hint of blue clinging stubbornly to the arch of its nose.

The creature twists and jerks on the floor, a brittle broken thing, struggling to get its limbs to obey it. Xavin's eyes trace along the lines of its back, trailing along pitted crags that scatter light like cracks in glass. Pale blue fluid leaks from one, rolling in fat droplets down the length of the Majesdane's arm and dissolving into steam the moment it hits the cell's cool tile floor.

Xavin draws his form in tight around himself, skin rippling a darker shade of green. The small bones in his fingers grow into one another to prevent his fists from balling.

He remembers hand thick manuals describing in clipped, clinical sentences the Imperial Standard Interrogation Techniques. He remembers nights spent curled up under his blankets learning of trust and betrayal, rewards and punishment, what is earned and what is taken. He knows this.

He _knows_ this.

Shame slinks hot and barbed up his spine and rakes razored tendrils across his scalp. His skin itches and squirms beneath his scales.

 _Wrong, wrong, all wrong,_ he thinks.

His father moves, form a liquid ripple in Xavin's eyes. His hands fist in the Majesdane's filthy hair and wrench it upwards, almost too fast for Xavin to follow. Its voice cracks from dry, ragged lips, a hot sharp spike against Xavin's eardrums.

Xavin's father, unfazed, drives his knee into his captive's chest. The figure wheezes and sputters, droplets of blue flecked foam catching on the corners of its lips.

"Quiet." He says, and Xavin's insides twist in on themselves in his rush to obey.

The Majesdane is not quiet. None of them are. There's a rising cacophony from the back wall, sobs and growls and sharp mournful wails. Sparks crackle against oilslick skin, skidding liquid along thin limbs towards energy-canceling restraints.

Xavin's joints creak with the effort of staying still.

His father is speaking, but Xavin's pulse pounds impossibly loud in his ears. Too loud. He's not trying to be disobedient, he swears, he just can't stop, can't make anything stop, can't make the world go still and quiet and _safe-_

There's a sharp snap, and then there's a body at his feet.

He can't help himself. He jolts backward, feet stuttering over slick tile. His balance wrecked by careless modifications, _stupid so stupid,_ he just barely manages to stay upright till his back hits the wall with a painful thud. A dull ache radiates outward from his spine, _good, deserve it._ His knees threaten to give out, but he twines his muscles tight around his bones, _tight enough to hurt_ , and rocks forward squarely onto his feet.

He can't bring himself to look at his father. His gaze is pulled magnetic to the slack sightless face of the Majesdane.

He had never noticed the spots before, stark white pinpricks drifting gently along currents of light. Like bright pale stars embedded in the multicolored miasma of its skin. Like a whole universe ended at his father's hands.

The next one is shorter and broader than the first, angry reds and yellows and oranges chasing each other in mad spirals around the circumference of its body. It sobs and howls and digs its long ragged nails into his father's skin, but its legs bend at odd angles and its skin is dull and feverish and its resistance does not last very long.

The third wrenches itself from his father's grasp and hurls itself at the door, beating its sharp boney fists against it till the white of its bones shows through skin and rivulets of blue steam and shudder against stark white paneling. The door remains stubbornly closed as the room fills with wisps of iron-scented steam.

The fourth presses its palms against its eyes and sends a pulse of star-speckled pink into its brain, face twisted into a grim mask of defiance.

The last is small, the smallest of all, almost as small as Xavin. It hangs limp in his father's grip, face twisted and damp with grief, teeth shining brilliant white against soft teal lips. Its eyes light on Xavin, dull and fevered and so so angry. It speaks, ragged and teary, in a language Xavin can't understand. His mind races, pulling forth ten thousand condemnations, pleas, help me, save me, it should have been you, it will be you. _Coward, deviant, wrong, wrong, all wrong._

The last Majesdane dies in a crumpled heap, blood leaking sluggishly from its mouth and glassy eyes staring vacantly upward.

Xavin has no name for the sick twist in his gut, for the throbbing bulk in his chest that forces his breaths to come out in sharp little gasps, for the burn in his eyes, the thick hot fog in his brain that scatters his thoughts like a flock of startled birds. He is petrified, frozen in parade rest, a sick parody of military discipline.

Movement, too big, too much, Xavin wants to curl up tight, small and sturdy and stable, grow thick armored plating, spines and claws and fangs, run hide flee fight.

There's a hand on his face, _too big too rough,_ that jerks his face upwards. _Father,_ he thinks distantly, _murderer predator threat,_ his hindbrain screams.

He's going to die here, he thinks, staring blankly at his father's inscrutable face. He imagines a splash of thick dark purple against white and thin bubbling blue. He imagines a small body dark and cold and forgotten in this tiny little cell in the lowest depths of his father's fortress home.

He wonders if anyone would morn him.

His father's grip tightens, and Xavin screws his eyes shut tight and lets out a soft, hiccuping sob.

"Pathetic."

A sharp flick of his father's wrist sends Xavin tumbling sideways and over one of the smoldering corpses, landing hard on his shoulder with a sharp cry.

 _Alive?_

Xavin scrabbles to his knees, mind racing to fast for his dully aching body to keep up.

He rubs at his cheek, absently, and pauses, dimly shocked to find his fingers damp.

 _Crying?_

He stares uncomprehending at his hand and feels something inside him splinter.

There's a new calm in his brain, a ribbon of dull unresponsive stillness, like scar tissue threading through the disjointed haze of his thoughts. Like some fragment of himself watches cold and silent as the rest of him spirals, scared and confused and shameful.

He watches from this distant numb fragment as his father leaves without a glance back at his only child, crumpled and sobbing among the corpses. He watches the door seal shut, seam melding into the wall smoothly and noiselessly. He watches himself move, slamming bodily into the wall where the door had been, watches his fingers spread paper thin, searching for cracks he knows aren't there, feels himself scream till his throat cracks and the taste of blood spreads through his mouth.

There is no way to tell how much time passes before he stops, exhausted. His head lolls against the wall, cheek smeared with a blue-black crust of Majesdane blood.

The stillness in his head grows in spiderweb cracks till all his sorrow and fear and shame fades into all consuming black.

Behind him, five corpses shudder and steam, a slow dim burn stripping flesh from bone with a series of soft pops and quiet rustles and the thick cloying scent of heated copper and roasting meat. Small hidden vents stir up eddies of ash that settle on the damp tracks on his face and coat the insides of his mouth and throat till the taste of burning is all he knows.


End file.
